Daniel started backing away, shouting. “Oh yeah? Well look at me now. You see this? This is me, walking away from you. Walking away from the protection detail. Because I don’t need a psycho bodyguard. I need a girlfriend.” He walked away down the gravel driveway, throwing once over his shoulder. “So you come find me when you’re ready to be that girl.”
I didn’t wait to watch the darkness swallow him up. Red rage ripped through me. I stamped my foot and threw a flaming fireball at the empty beachfront, screaming. “Damn you to hell, Daniel!”
The flames skittered harmlessly onto wet sand and died. I stomped away to the Jeep, texting Simone furiously. ‘Can we go now? I’m at the car. I wait 4 u ther.’
Leila never looked back. Not in the direction where Daniel had disappeared. Not at the beachfront where they had been standing. Not even at the restaurant. And so she never saw the boy who had been standing in the shadows of the coconut grove, listening. Watching. Keahi lit a cigarette, the red glow dancing on his sardonic smile, catching on the glint of gold at his raised eyebrow as he watched Leila get in her Jeep and slam the door with another curse word.
NINE
Today was a day of firsts. I had started at a new school three different times in the last two years but this time was different. Here now, today, at the National University of Samoa, was the first time I was starting at a new school with ready-made friends. Simone in full pulili mode led the way from the Jeep, wearing one of my ruffled off the shoulder TAV tops, a skintight pair of black jeans, and red platform heels. Sinalei struggled to keep up in the puletasi her mother had made her wear. Maleko was checking his hair one last time in the mirror, “Wait up guys.”
As the only one with my own car, I was resigned to the fact that I would be providing the official taxi service for everyone, especially as Maleko and Sinalei were en-route so I couldn’t very well say no, could I?
“Hurry up Leila, we’re gonna be late and all the good ones will be taken.” Simone waited impatiently for me to grab my bag and lock the Jeep.
Just then, Daniel’s truck turned into the parking lot and Maleko let out a whoop, “Uce!”
Just great. My smile faded and I quickened my pace to the admin block. Because today marked another first. The first time I would experience running into an ex-boyfriend who had effectively dumped me. This was the first time I would rather face an angry horde of telesā than see Daniel. I almost ran in my haste to get as far away from the parking lot as I could, Simone and the others following behind me.
Ever clueless, Sinalei asked loudly, “That’s Daniel. Why aren’t we waiting for him?”
Simone rolled his eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Because we’re not speaking to him today Sinalei. Must we spell it out for you?” He turned mid-step and spoke slowly, as if to a child. “This week, Daniel is a dumb ass. Next week, he will go back to being Leila’s Chunk Hunk and we can delight in his gorgeousness, okay? Right, Leila? We’re just gonna be mad for this week right?”
I ignored Simone and kept walking.“You all can talk to Daniel whenever you want to. I have nothing to say to him.”
I stalked off to find my first lecture, but my brain was crowded with a swarm of thoughts. Chaotic fruit bats battling to escape. I didn’t know how it had all gone wrong. Only a few days ago, life had been a series of almost perfect moments. Daniel and I had been talking about forever. And now? I had been doing lots of thinking since that anger-filled night, trying to see things from his perspective, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that Daniel was being a class A jerk. Looking back, I could trace the progression though. Starting with his refusal to talk about our close shave with that shark or anything to do with the night the ocean had saved his life. To the whole stupid fence and gate thing. How idiotic was that? I should have seen the barbed wire for what it really was. An insecure boyfriend’s attempt to assert some measure of control over a girlfriend he obviously felt threatened by. But then, what boy would be able to handle a girlfriend who could incinerate him with a thought? I shouldn’t be angry at him for deciding he couldn’t handle it, right? I shouldn’t. But I was. Because he had convinced me that what we had was strong enough for even the most explosive of volcanoes. That together, we could face anything and everything.
Everything, it seemed – except for a fragile male ego.
The first day of lectures was relatively painless. Simone was in three of my five classes, which meant they were guaranteed to be interesting, no matter what. Every so often I ran into other familiar faces from Samoa College. Some less appealing than others. The lissome, beautiful Mele was in my English tutorial. Lucky me. We both ignored each other. Sinalei and Maleko were in my science lectures and it was a relief to have friends to sit with. And Daniel was in my other two core subjects, but it didn’t matter because so were two hundred other students and he was just a boy across a crowded lecture theatre. Yeah, so he was a boy impossible to miss, even in a plain t-shirt and shorts. Beauty cut in perfect lines of supple stone. But I was working hard on the ignoring him part. And not doing too badly. I would have made it through the entire day without even talking to him if the unexpected hadn’t happened.
The unexpected being Keahi. The boy from the regatta. Sitting at a table in the canteen courtyard with a group of other students. Talking. Laughing. Looking for all the world like he belonged there. I stopped short in my tracks with a Diet Coke and a half-eaten donut in hand. Too startled to be composed. Wondering how I could flame him without about fifty students noticing.
I went up to him. “It’s you.”
He didn’t betray any surprise. “Yeah, it’s me. And ooh look, it’s you.” he replied drily.
“Are you following me?” I demanded.
He turned and raised that pierced eyebrow at me with a pitying look. “Baby, I hate to break it to you, but you ain’t got nuthin’ worth following.”
He said it loud enough for the others to hear, and they laughed. Of course. Because that’s what self-important boys with grating, deficient personalities and meager intellect like to do. Belittle girls in front of as large an audience as possible. Probably to make up for their inadequacies in every other area that counted for anything. I didn’t back off. Instead, I raised my voice, inviting even more listeners. Loud. Firm. Authoritative.
“You followed me at the bar the other night, harassed me, touched me, grabbed me – even after I told you several times to get away from me. And now you’re here at my university. I think that counts as stalker behavior.”
People everywhere in the courtyard were staring now. I had just called him out for sexual harassment and being a stalker. Take that, you cinnamon chili stick. You walking advertisement for the perils of ink addiction. Ha.
To his credit, he didn’t even look embarrassed. Instead, he smiled that sneering grin and threw a side comment at the other boys. “Excuse us. If I don’t deal with her now, she’ll never leave me alone.” More laughter. He stood up and looped an arm casually over my shoulder, taking me with him away from the rest of the lunch crowd so that we stood out of hearing distance but not so much that everyone couldn’t still see us.
My skin crawled at his touch and I shook his arm away. “Don’t touch me. Ever. I just want to know why you’re following me. And the other night at the club, what was that all about? Were you sick? What is wrong with you?” Still he said nothing, only kept staring at me with that same sneering smile on his face.
“Are you listening to me? I said, why are you here at my school? Why haven’t you gone back to Hawaii? I heard all the teams left in the weekend. Keahi? Say something. Why are you staring at me like that? Are you listening to me?”
His response had me gaping. “No, I don’t give a shit what you were saying. I was looking at your lips and imagining kissing you.”
Stunned, I took an involuntary step back. “Excuse me? What did you say?”
Keahi shrugged. “I’m wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Do you taste of vanilla and a hint of chili? Because th
at’s what you smell like.”
Fear tiptoed with icy feet through my tightening chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.” Keahi smiled and leaned in closer, much to the avid interest of the lunch spectators. “I think that when I kiss you, all your tattoos will glow red like fire. I know mine will. Shall we try it? Right here. Right now?”
With his closeness came that same familiar fragrance I had tasted the other night. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t freak out. Because with panic and freaking out comes fire and heat. I needed to get away from this boy. Now. I backed away. “Stay far away from me. You hear me? Don’t come near me again.”
But this strange boy wasn’t ready to let me go. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him so he could whisper. “I’ve always wanted to kiss a fire goddess.” The ice cold feet were now a stomping avalanche of fear suffocating me.
“I don’t know what you think you saw that night – but you’re wrong. You’re insane. Get away from me.”
Who was this boy? Why did it feel like he knew me? The earthy, simmering, always-ready-to-erupt me? And why did he stir up such bone-crushing terror? Terror tinged with something else. I fought against fear, fought for control of my fire before the entire courtyard exploded with a lava jet plume. I was fighting a losing battle, when I saw him. Daniel. Oh no. He strolled into the courtyard with Maleko. Almost immediately, his eyes leapt to where we stood and took in the entire scene. Keahi. My arm captive in his. The fear on my face. Instantly, his face darkened and he walked over with purposeful strides. Keahi hadn’t seen him.
Seeing Daniel gave me the jolt I needed to re-assert control on fanua afi. I yanked my arm away from Keahi’s grasp. Fierce. “I’m out of here.”
“But I’m not done talking to you,” he warned.
And then Daniel was there.
“What’s going on here? Are you alright, Leila?” Daniel’s body was tense with anger, and the air was a finely strung wire waiting to snap. Beside Keahi’s slight build, Daniel looked even bigger. More threatening. Solid. Immovable. Unbreakable. I wavered, longed to move into his arms and wilt into their strength. But I was not, and would not, be that girl. The one who needed barbed wire fences and gates. The girl who got her boyfriend dragged into conflict situations where he could get attacked. Tortured. Killed. I held fast to that image, that memory of his inert body, electrocuted again and again by the telesā matagi, the glint of the knife as it stabbed into his chest, the stillness of the water after they threw his body over the side of the boat.
I held fast to all those things, held my head high and drew strength from my mother earth fanua. “I’m fine, thank you. I was just leaving.”
I turned to go, ignoring the cut of pain in Daniel’s eyes. It would have worked though. The defusing would have succeeded. If Keahi hadn’t opened his taunting big mouth. “Hi Daniel. Leila and I were just talking about you. She was telling me all about how your over-inflated male ego can’t handle the fact that she’s not a whimpering … no, that’s not it. What words did she use exactly? Hmm, that’s right. You can’t handle it that she’s not a simpering, squealing girl who needs her boyfriend to protect her every time someone as much as looks at her funny. Did I get your words right there, Leila?”
My words wielded as weapons by this taunting stranger. Could this day get any worse? Outrage. “I did not say that … how did you know that?!” I turned to Daniel, who looked as if he’d been slammed by a pack scrum. “He’s lying, I never told him about any of that.”
But Daniel’s defenses were up. “No, you’re right Leila. You’re not a girl who needs a boyfriend to protect her. You do just fine on your own, don’t you?” He threw a glance at Keahi. “Or maybe I was just the wrong kind of boyfriend.”
“Daniel, no – wait!” But he was gone. Striding across the courtyard in the painfully brilliant sunshine.
I looked back at Keahi. The laughing, the broken smile on his face, the raised eyebrow. All of it. “You lied. There’s no way you could have known those things. Unless …” my voice died away.
“Unless what?” He leaned against the brick wall, arms folded, clearly loving every minute of the encounter. “You should be more careful when you’re having deep and meaningful screaming sessions with your boyfriend out in the open. You never know who could be listening.”
I glared at him. Anger, hate, rage, frustration, hurt. “Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“That’s just it.” Keahi shrugged. And for the first time, his tone was no longer teasing. “I don’t know why I can’t.”
Defeated. I walked away. And this time, Keahi let me go.
The days blended into one another. Days of torture catching glimpses of Daniel at a distance, trying to still the smile, the leap of my heart, the catch of my breath every time I saw him. Listening to Simone lecture me about girls who are “awful witches to their poor boyfriends for no reason. You know what happens to those girls, don’t you, Leila? They end up lonely, haggard old bags talking to their imaginary friends. Watching Game of Thrones re-runs and believing that Khal Drogo is going to come alive again. Why can’t you fix this? Why can’t you apologize?”
So maybe I was watching a few too many episodes of Game of Thrones. Big deal. So what? The brutal violence distracted me from the anger I harbored. For Keahi. For Daniel. For the world in general. No, more specifically – all boys in general. I couldn’t understand them and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
Simone had it all wrong. I had tried to fix it. I had called Daniel after the courtyard show-down. Apologized. Explained what had happened. And he had listened. A silent, cold presence on the other side of the line. And when my explanations had run out of steam he had assured me that no, he wasn’t mad at me. Anymore. No, he didn’t hate me. But he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to be together right now.
“I think we should take a break from each other.”
“A break?” My voice squeaked. The chocolate ad jeered in my head. Have a break, have a Kit-Kat. Why in hell would I want a break?
“Yeah. Some space. I think we let things get too intense between us, way too fast. So much happened last year. Maybe we need space so we can get perspective. So we can breathe.”
What was he talking about? I couldn’t breathe now, listening to this rubbish about space for breathing. This couldn’t be happening. Me and Daniel weren’t some High School Musical teenagers who squabbled and split up over petty things like lip gloss and basketball. We had stood strong against a matagi sisterhood. We were tougher than this. We were forever. This could not be happening.
But it was. “Last year, you needed time out from me. And everything. I love you more than life and I’m always going to love you this way, but I’m asking you, Leila, if you love me? Then please, give me some time out.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Reason it away. Or make sense of it. All I could do was agree. For the first time I understood the meaning of that stupid saying, If you love someone, set them free…
Daniel was hanging up on me now. “Hey, I gotta go. I got work to do. We’ll catch up sometime.”
I clung to that word ‘sometime’ like a life raft. The possibilities in it. Last year, Daniel had waited for me. Loved me from a distance. I could do the same for him. Couldn’t I?
In the meantime, I threw myself into my work at the Center, attending the self-defense classes after university lectures, pretending to be Dayna’s assistant so I could have an excuse to hit things. The numbers grew every day as word spread about the skills we were learning and most classes were maxed out at twenty-five people – young and old – all Center residents and their children. The space quickly became cramped, and Dayna moved sparring sessions outdoors with bag work inside. Mrs. Amani had agreed that the Center needed a proper gymnasium, and I met with Thompson about accessing Nafanua’s funds for a building project. We contracted an engineering firm to do the plans, and they would break ground in a
nother month. In the evenings, I volunteered in the homework tutor classes, helping girls with their English assignments (but wisely stayed away from math problems).
The work at the Center was invigorating. Addictive even. I liked seeing my mother’s money – the proceeds of her telesā gifts – being utilized for good. I liked spending time with the Center residents. So many of them had lived through hell and were grateful to have a month, a week, a day without fear. Conversations with them made me realize that I had lived a rather sheltered life. Folgers didn’t get out in the regular world much. Even brown thug Folgers. I quickly discovered that Mrs. Amani had been painfully correct about the children being the most vulnerable victims. Time and again, I saw another woman check out of the Center to go back and live with her abusive partner, taking her children with her. And everyone hoped they wouldn’t need to come back. But chances of that were low.
I kept tabs on Daniel. Of course. But it wasn’t easy. I rarely saw him at university. I drove past his house every night though. And casually meandered along his street after school every day, pretending that I wasn’t staring at the workshop. At his house. Maleko reported that Daniel had quit playing club rugby for the Moata’a team and instead spent all his spare time paddling. So I took up outrigger canoe stalking in the evenings. I went for runs on the Apia seawall, scoping out the Pualele boats as they did their sprints in the harbor, knifing through the blue-jet water. Always hoping for a glimpse of the boy who wanted a break from me.
I saw a lot of Keahi though because every other minute of the day, the boy was in my face. He was enrolled in all the same classes as me. Smoking in the corridor when I walked to my next class, lurking in the library aisles without any books, sipping a soda across from me in the courtyard at lunch. He never tried to make contact or talk to me. He was just everywhere I turned. Just present. Just there. Staring at me with those charcoal eyes and taunting me with that sneering smile. Simone hated him.
When Water Burns Page 17
